LIGHTBURN Hospital, which campaigners and politicians are trying to save from the axe, is “past its time” according to a health board chief.

Catriona Renfrew, Director of Planning, at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said health services have moved on to a new model of care which the east end hospital doesn’t fit any more.

She said the service changes that are planned are better for patients and will see more people treated at home or closer to their home than Lightburn allows.

With new facilities and capabilities, she said that many people who are currently treated in Lightburn do not need to be there.

The architect of the plan said services would not be lost to the area but enhanced.

She admitted that some patients in Lightburn will be moved to Stobhill in the north of the city, but that they will receive better care in a more modern and appropriate setting.

In 2011 Nicola Sturgeon, as Heath Secretary, overturned a proposal to shut the hospital and told the health board instead to invest in and improve the hospital.

Five years later, under a new plan, the hospital would shut and the current health secretary, Shona Robison is being urged to save it again.

However, this time the circumstances are different, Ms Renfrew argues.

She said: “Since 2001 we’ve got a new range of facilities in the east end being run by the health and social care partnership which has brought together the delivery of community health services , care home services and social care.

“We’ve got new community rehabilitation teams who are able to make sure patients are discharged home from hospital and get a rehabilitation service in their own home.”

“Patients will go to five or six different places locally the health board says, whereas in 2011 the plan was simply to move it all to Stobhill.”

She said many will be discharged straight to their home where services will be delivered.

Ms Renfrew said those who need acute care will receive it in Stobhill with round the clock medical cover and investigation and imaging facilities.

Others who require rehabilitation, will receive it either in care home beds the health and social care partnership has secured in two local care homes, or in the patient’s home.

Lightburn, she said, no longer fits with modern healthcare delivery.

She added: “This is a natural progression of the journey of acute care not being where you want to keep patients and providing a much greater range of services and doing as much as possible in the east end.

“Again if you go back to 2011, those models of care weren’t on offer for the east end in the care home facilities, so it was a more limited range which would’ve seen more people going to Stobhill and that wasn’t acceptable locally and that’s why we’ve come out with a new proposal that is something different.

“But we do get stuck in this thing about protecting a hospital that’s part of a system of acute care that actually is past its time.”

She said the direction of travel locally and nationally is towards doing less in acute hospitals and more in the community and in patients’ homes.

The difference between the 2011 plan and the current one is the range of services, she said, adding: “It is not just a transplantation of Lightburn to Stobhill and that’s probably one of the things that is not well understood.”

She said the community facilities will be en-suite accommodation in the east end for “step-down” and “intermediate care” for people on a journey from their initial admission at the Royal Infirmary to their home or a care home.

She also said it was not true it was purely an east end hospital, stating patients from East Dunbartonshire and Maryhill in the Royal Infirmary catchment area are admitted to Lightburn.

Ms Renfrew said that the Health Board did invest in Lightburn, but added: “You can’t turn a hospital of that age into a modern hospital. You can’t turn Lightburn into the Queen Elizabeth.”

She said the same process was applied in other areas of the city with Drumchapel Hospital recently closed and the Mansionhouse Unit in the south also closed.

Ms Renfrew added: “Drumchapel has closed for exactly the same reasons and moved to the same model of care we are proposing, so it is not a victimisation of Lightburn or a focus on Lightburn. It is a new system of care across Greater Glasgow and Clyde.”